Downpours rained on King Charles’s military flypast parade as a procession of Royal Air Force planes from past and present was scaled back because of the weather.
The original plans had involved 14 waves totalling 60 aircraft scheduled to take part, including F-35B Lightning and Typhoon FGR4 jets, as well as the instantly recognisable Battle of Britain Memorial Flight aircraft group of Spitfires, Hurricanes and a Lancaster.
However, after some of the aircraft had already taken off and were in a holding pattern over the east coast of England and the North Sea, the Ministry of Defence announced that the flypast would be drawn back to just helicopters and the Red Arrows performance team. Defence chiefs had raised the possibility on Friday.
The four second world war planes are vulnerable to bad weather, and their appearance at airshows has previously been called off because of adverse conditions.
It came as King Charles inherited an unwelcome event as he was crowned – bad weather on coronation day. Rain has now been seen on the previous four coronation days, including that of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in June 1953.
On Saturday coronation guests could be seen being led from their cars to Westminster Abbey under umbrellas, with anoraks and brollies out in the crowds who assembled on the Mall as showers fell all morning.
It mimicked the conditions nearly 70 years ago, termed “an atrocious day in the middle of a lengthy spell of atrocious weather” by the late weather historian Philip Eden. The highest temperature on that June day was an unseasonably chilly 11.8C (53.2F).
“2 June itself was a miserable, November-like day in London as far as the weather was concerned, with dull skies, a chill wind and sporadic outbreaks of rain during the morning,” he wrote.
Rain was also seen elsewhere in the country that day. The Met Office daily weather report said: “It was a cold day for early June, particularly down the east coast and really quite miserable here given all the cloud and rain as well.”
There was also rain on the day of George VI’s coronation in 1937, with occasional spots at those of his father and grandfather.
Fast-forward seven decades to King Charles’s coronation and the Met Office warned of “outbreaks of rain, heavy in places, moving north-east across much of England and Wales”.
A few hundred spectators gathered with their hoods up and perched under umbrellas in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, as screens were erected at Cardiff Castle. The king visited the medieval motte and bailey castle just over a week after the queen died in September last year.
Meanwhile, it was chilly and foggy in Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh, as hundreds gathered in Princes Street Gardens to watch the festivities 330 miles (530km) away.
Rain is forecast to continue into Saturday night and Sunday, particularly in eastern areas, meaning Windsor Castle may be untroubled by showers for the coronation concert on Sunday evening.
In the rest of the country mild temperatures will follow, with wet weather carrying on in to the middle of next week.
